Cloud Computing/Transcript
Transcript Text reads: The Mysteries of Life with Tim and Moby Tim is relaxing in a beach chair by a hotel pool. He is holding a coconut drink with a straw. Caribbean music plays. Moby walks over to Tim holding an armload of electronic equipment, including a laptop, a tablet, and some hard drives and disks. TIM: Welcome to Paradise, Moby. Take a load off, and have some coconut juice. Moby fumbles and drops his armload of electronics. They crash to the ground. The laptop computer falls into the pool and short-circuits as it sinks. Moby looks very upset and shakes his fist. MOBY: Beep. Moby sits down into the empty chair and pouts. Tim picks up and examines the tablet Moby dropped. TIM: What's with all the hardware, anyway? Digital photos, music library with every Hillbots song ever, secret plans to build a giant laser. An image shows the screen of Moby's laptop, which displays what Tim has described. There is a notification of an incoming e-mail. TIM: This might be a good time for that letter. Tim opens the e-mail and reads the letter on Moby's tablet. TIM: Dear Tim and Moby, Can you do a movie on cloud computing? Thanks, Reynard. Moby could use some help from the cloud. His data files are local. They exist only on his laptop, plus the disks and drives he saved copies on. If anything happened to those devices, he could kiss his stuff goodbye. Moby panics and grabs his tablet from Tim. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Now, imagine your data lived up in the sky, far away from swimming pools and clumsy robots. An animation represents Moby's data floating in a cloud far above the earth. TIM: Whenever you needed it, you could simply reach up and pluck the data out of the air, no matter where you were. Hands reach from the earth and take data from the cloud. TIM: That's cloud computing, my friend. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Yeah. The cloud is just a metaphor. The data isn't really floating in the sky. It's stored in places called data centers, warehouses filled with rows of powerful computers. Data centers are located all over the world and connected through the Internet. Images show a data center and computers inside it. TIM: All you need to tap into this network is an Internet-ready device, like a computer, tablet, or smart phone. An animation represents a computer, tablet, and smart phone tapping into "the cloud." MOBY: Beep. TIM: Actually, if you have web-based e-mail, you're already using the cloud. When you log in, you're accessing the e-mail service's cloud. The application runs from there, and your e-mails are stored there. Moby accesses his e-mail account from his tablet. An illustration symbolizes three new e-mails waiting for him in "the cloud." TIM: That photo-sharing site you're on is cloud-based, too. Moby accesses his photos from his tablet. TIM: Every time you upload a picture from your phone, you're storing it in the photo service's cloud. Moby takes a picture of himself with his phone. An animation shows that picture joining the others in his photo-sharing account. MOBY: Beep. Moby drops the rest of his electronics into a recycling container next to his chair. TIM: The cloud is way more than a big storage bin. It can run applications you'd normally have to install on your device. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Say you want to use a 3D graphics program to design your giant laser. An image shows a $199 box of "DigiGraphics" software. TIM: Rather than installing it on your laptop, you could subscribe to a cloud-based version of it. You'd only pay for the service as long as you needed it. An animation represents the arrangement Tim describes, indicating that the cloud-based version is $12.99 a month. TIM: And all you'd need to install is some interface software, a tiny program that connects you to the full application in the cloud. Businesses do this all the time now. Instead of buying hundreds of copies of software, they just subscribe. Besides saving a lot of money, it saves a ton of space. An animation shows workers in an office accessing the "DigiGraphics" software from "the cloud." TIM: Since you don't have to store bulky software, one device can run hundreds of applications. An animation shows a woman looking at a computer screen with several application icons. MOBY: Beep. Moby holds up his tablet, which is displaying the title screen for a TV show called "The Real Housecats of Muskogee." TIM: That's right. We subscribe to TV and movie services in the cloud, too. You can start watching your favorite show right away because you only download a little at a time. This streaming data gets deleted while you watch, so your storage doesn't fill up with old stuff. An animation represents Moby's television show data being downloaded from "the cloud" onto his tablet, being watched, and then disappearing. TIM: It works sort of like a radio signal, except you can always rewind. My music service works the same. I can stream practically any song in existence for a monthly fee. An animation displays the process Tim describes. Music moves from "the cloud" to Tim's portable music device, then disappears. MOBY: Beep. Moby holds his tablet up triumphantly. TIM: Yep, the cloud lets you do a lot more with just one device. Your data is safe, because it's stored in a bunch of different locations. Even if it gets deleted in one place, it's backed up somewhere else. An image represents identical copies of Moby's data floating on several clouds. One cloud disappears with an audible pop, leaving all the others. TIM: And when information isn't trapped on a local device, it opens up all kinds of possibilities. Check this out. Rita and I are partners on a science project. An image shows Tim and Rita working together in a school's lab. TIM: We're writing our research report on a cloud-based document. So even though we're half a world away, we can work on the report at the same time. An image shows a computer screen, with Tim and Rita communicating by "chat" and both adding information to the same document. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Sure, there are some drawbacks. If you find yourself somewhere with spotty Internet access, good luck trying to use the cloud. An image shows Tim and Moby atop a snow-capped mountain. Tim is wearing an oxygen mask. Moby is waving his tablet in the air, trying unsuccessfully to connect to the Internet. TIM: Then there are privacy and security concerns. When you put your stuff in the cloud, you're trusting data centers and service providers to keep it safe. No matter how secure the service is, there's always the risk of someone hacking into your stuff. An animation depicts the cloud as a safe, securely locking up a user's information. A hacker appears, enters the safe's combination, and accesses the information. MOBY: Beep. TIM: I wouldn't worry too much about it. Cloud services and data centers have to be super secure. Their reputations depend on it. For most of us, data stored in the cloud is safer than it is on our own devices. Moby uses a fishing rod to cast a line into the pool and retrieve his laptop computer. It hangs by Moby's fishing line over the surface of the water. TIM: Case in point. Category:BrainPOP Engineering & Technology Transcripts Category:BrainPOP Transcripts